In January 2012, some of the leading country musicians got together to bring to life the traditional American folk songs written about by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her internationally best-selling series Little House on the Prairie. For the first time in concert, this music was performed in front of an intimate audience at the Loveless Barn in Nashville and filmed for broadcast.

The concert was seen nationwide on PBS throughout June and was one of the most successful of the 2012 public TV fundraising programs. Additional broadcasts will be scheduled for Fall 2012.

The idea for pairing notable country artists with traditional American repertoire was the initiative of Dean Butler (film producer and the actor who played Almanzo, Laura’s husband, on the Little House on the Prairie TV show) and musicologist Dale Cockrell (Professor of Musicology at Middle Tennessee State University).

“Dale Cockrell loves traditional American music and I love the stories of American pioneer life written by Laura Ingalls Wilder,” says Dean Butler. “Having this opportunity to share the music Laura recalled in her unforgettable novels is nothing less than a dream come true.”

The concert includes well known artists such as Randy Travis, Rodney Atkins, Ronnie Milsap, Ashton Shepherd, The Roys, Natalie Grant and Committed (NBC Sing Off Champions) accompanied by a skilled band led by Grammy award-winning musician and musical director Randy Scruggs.

The concert DVD release contains 14 performances including standouts The Roy’s performance of “The Gum Tree Canoe”, Ronnie Milsap’s “Dixie/The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “Roll the Old Chariot Along” by Committed in addition to bonus performance footage from Natalie Grant, discussion of the historical context for Charles Ingalls fiddle music from Dale Cockrell, and a video short titled: “Little House on the Prairie: the Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

Also available are the accompanying concert cd and a companion Primer cd featuring recordings by Riders in the Sky, Bryan Sutton and Mac Wiseman, among others, performing additional songs from the books.

Little House on the Prairie, the autobiographical bookseries by Laura Ingalls Wilder, offers the most authentic firsthand account of 19th-century American folk music available to us. Seen through the lens of Laura’s father Charles “Pa” Ingalls (1836-1902), a highly acclaimed fiddler of the time, the books offer a window into the music that Americans played, sang and listened to in the late 1800s.

The Little House on the Prairie books are among the most popular of all time, with over 60 million copies sold since the release of Little House in the Big Woods in 1932. The much-loved TV show, which was inspired by the books, has been in syndication since its debut in 1974.